After nearly three years of consideration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is standing pat on regulation of pyrolysis operations and will continue to view them as incineration.
The move buys time for further EPA study but is a setback for those in the plastics industry that have been seeking to have pyrolysis regulated as a manufacturing system instead of incineration.
Regulating pyrolysis invokes "onerous and inappropriate permitting requirements" the American Chemistry Council has claimed.
But environmental group Beyond Plastics has said the agency is correct its current view. "Gasification and pyrolysis units combust waste and are therefore incinerators. This is true regardless of any semantics or word games the industry puts forth," the group said in a 2021 letter to the EPA.
The federal government will continue to regulate pyrolysis as "other solid waste incineration units" (OSWI) after looking into whether to remove the facilities from that classification. It was back in August 2020 that the EPA started looking at the issue because the term "pyrolysis/combustion" is not defined in current OSWI regulation.
EPA later sought public input and a better understanding of pyrolysis and combustion units in September 2021, ultimately receiving 170 comments and holding discussions with stakeholders, the agency said.
After gathering those comments and holding those discussions, EPA is now saying it actually needs more time to consider just how to regulate pyrolysis.
The agency said, in the Federal Register, "it is evident that that pyrolysis is a complex process that is starting to be used in many and varied industries. EPA will need significant time and personnel resources to fully analyze the comments and evaluate all the current information sources to gain a technical and regulatory understanding of the pyrolysis process."
EPA is currently finalizing OSWI rulemaking under a court mandated schedule and the agency said it "is likely that the agency's review of pyrolysis information may need to extend beyond the final rulemaking deadline."
"The EPA does not believe it would be appropriate for those sources to become unregulated emissions sources during the time required for our analysis of pyrolysis/combustion units to be completed," the agency said. So the agency is withdrawing the idea of removal for now.
Joshua Baca, vice president of the Plastics Division of the ACC, has previously said that regulating pyrolysis as incineration implies the end of life of a product. His trade group wants pyrolysis to be considering a manufacturing process.
When asked for reaction to the latest EPA move, ACC issued the following statement: “In its 2020 proposed rule, EPA correctly concluded that pyrolysis is not combustion of solid waste. The facts underlying that finding have not changed. For this and related reasons, many states have correctly concluded these innovative recycling technologies should be regulated as manufacturing operations. EPA’s action on Monday has not altered how advanced recycling facilities are regulated at multiple levels and under many laws, including the Clean Air Act.”
Maris Gargas, senior technical director of regulatory affairs at the Plastics Industry Association, also reacted to the decision:
“If the EPA were to classify pyrolysis and gasification as incineration or combustion processes, these two technologies would no longer be considered recycling. They are different in purpose and chemistry from combustion and incineration so they should not be regulated under Section 129 of the CAA as other solid waste incineration units (OSWI). Pyrolysis and gasification facilities are already properly regulated and permitted as manufacturing facilities,” Gargas said.